Local Business - Marketing Where To Start

Well, in this discussion, I want to talk about what I think is probably the most valuable asset you have. And those are people that have already had.

Have done business with you. They've already voted with their wallets, they've already given you a credit card, and they have bought your product or service. That's probably the place I would say you need to start with first. Now, what do you do with these people? Or how do you. How you do. Do you start with them?

Do you ever get stuck when it comes to getting more customers for your business? With all the choices available, not only offline, but now with digital marketing and AI, where does one begin? If you are a local business owner and you want to grow your business, then you've come to the right place. The Local Voice is a show dedicated to sifting through the noise and sharing practical steps to help you achieve your goals. Welcome to another episode of the Local Voice, hosted by Jeff Harrison, a practitioner in the world of digital marketing. Get ready to take some notes. Let's begin.

Welcome back to the Local Voice. I am Jeff Harrison. And we're on the last day or two of 2023, and you know, this time of year, we always kind of go into a situation where we start thinking about, hey, what do we want to do for next year? What are our. What are our goals and aspirations? So before I get into that, I just want to share something that happened today. I had a. Had a meeting with a. With a colleague today, and it made me realize how complicated sometimes this local business marketing can be. And by that, I mean, it's like, hey, where the heck do we even start? And so if I could share today, being my only goal today is to share with you some insights of if you have all these. Imagine they're puzzle pieces. They're laid out on a table, and maybe they're. Maybe they're 12 to 15 pieces. Which one should you start with? Which one may have the biggest impact for you? Well, in this discussion, I want to talk about what I think is probably the most valuable asset you have. And those are people that have already had.

Have done business with you. They've already voted with their wallets, they've already given you a credit card, and they have bought your product or service. That's probably the place I would say you need to start with first. Now, what do you do with these people? Or how do you. How do you start with them? Well, hopefully you have their name and their email address. And I would start by having a conversation with them on a weekly basis with A consistent email. Now, some of you might say, well, geez, I, you know, I only have it in my, you know, QuickBooks or, you know, in PayPal. But you have their email address. Well, I would gather those all up and I would put those into something like a mailchimp. Start with mailchimp. I think it's free for the first couple thousand names in there. Very inexpensive, free. And I would just start moving them over there. And then I would write an email every week giving them tidbits or a value that, you know, that would help them. Didn't have to be specifically about your business. It can lead back to your business. But the idea is you're staying in touch with them. Think of these people as their friends. And every time you see them, you're not trying to sell them on what you do. You're checking in. How are they doing? How's the family? Well, you won't ask those silly, you know, excuse me, you won't ask those specific questions. But what you may do is bring up something in the community, you know, that will resonate with them. Maybe an opportunity that they could take advantage of that has nothing to do with, with you or their business or your business, but they would find enjoyable. Maybe there's something going on at a local theater or there's a. There's a night hike or whatever it may be, and you're sharing that information. What this is doing is keeping you top of mind. And so the next time they're out with their group of friends or they're communicating with someone that they know and they bring up an idea or somebody in the group brings up a question that your product or service might solve, they have a story they can share with them and make a recommendation because you will be top of mind. Now what's the opposite of that? Well, the opposite of that is someone who sends an email out often and all they do is they put in a. What I'll call a buy me call in there. And what that means to me is I'm just giving you a discount coupon or, or something that says, hey, buy me now. That's it. There's nothing else of value. Like that's all you want from me is you want to buy my stuff. Well, that doesn't tend to make me remember you as much as if I told you a story that was beneficial to you. Maybe you could use with your family or your friends. Maybe it could save you money, whatever it might be.

That would help you remember me better. So I would start with emails. Now why would I start with emails? Well, first of all, again, like I said, they know like and trust you. Second, it's, it's inexpensive. We've already said, what's the startup cost in that? 0. 0. Now some of you might say, well, you know, I'm not very good at writing emails. Well, this is what I would recommend doing. I'd recommend downloading, getting a, getting an app called Chat GPT. Yep. I'm going to suggest AI and I want you to just download that, get the free version 3.5. And then what I want you to do is I want you to ask, called a prompt, but you're going to put in there, you're going to type in a question, something like, I want to write four emails to my ideal customer, keeping them informed, giving them a value, giving them value, and here's who they are. And then describe in this prompt area who your customers are. You know, they're homeowners, they have children, they're adults, they have no children, they play golf. Whatever it may be, the more information you give ChatGPT, the better. It can give you information and then it'll write you four emails for that. Now you may take all of the email or you may take a portion of the email. What I would recommend always is I would do what we call aio. It's not my term, it's from, from another company, but it's, it's, it's human. It's artificial intelligence optimized. In other words, there's a human involved. You're going to optimize that and personalize that so when you send it out, it is from you and it reads like you. It sounds like a human. But what this does accelerates the whole process and time commitment that you have going on that now you can copy and paste that finished optimized email into mailchimp. Now I'm not going to try to on a audio podcast walk you through how to use Mailchimp. I'd recommend just going to YouTube University. Yes, that's YouTube University. No, it's not university, but it's YouTube. And I would, I would type in, you know how to get started on mailchimp. Sending my first email and I'm sure there's, if there's not one, there's a dozen email or videos on there on how to do that. And then I start sending that out. Now some of you might say, well, what else can I send out with my emails? Well, I would recommend going to if you don't have it or if you do have it. I go to my Google business profile and I would get the share link for my reviews and I would put that in the bottom and I put it as a P.S. p.S. Is one of the most highly read part of an email PS So I put it below my signature put PS Hey PS we're trying to build up our reviews for our company. I really appreciate it. If you could just click the link below and add your thoughts and you know, all five star reviews are really appreciated. Have a great day. Boom, that's it. And send that out with the bottom. You know every email, send that out and see if that doesn't help you gain some new reviews because let's face it, if they found your service valuable, all you're going to do is ask them to tell people, share that information. Make it as easy as possible. Provide the link. Don't make them, don't make them. Go to your YouTube profile and try to figure this out. Share that link. So that would be the first place I would begin a special shout out to this week's sponsor Mortgage Works where they have the answers and they're on the house. Are you looking to refinance? Maybe get a home equity line of credit? Or maybe you've been wondering if a reverse mortgage could be just what you need to kickstart your retirement. ART Alvarez, with 40 years in lending can help you decide with that information. Call them today at 760-883-5700 because the rates are back on their way down. Thanks again, Art, for sponsoring this week's Local Voice. The second place I would begin if you don't have a list is I would take a look and say, well, how are you attracting names to be put on a list? How are you attracting potential new customers? And this is only, this is the second thing I'm going to give you and I'm not going to give any more to work with is I would recommend building an irresistible offer.

And then putting that out in the marketplace. So it's like constantly someone out there, think of somebody spinning a sign out there on the corner selling mattresses or couches or whatever. In your situation, you're trying to get the attention of your potential ideal customer with your irresistible offer. Now let me give you an example of irresistible offer and I'm going to use one that I wrote in an article today and it's for a, for a landscaping company. And as we all know, you know, sometimes our landscapers show up on time. Sometimes they show up the day late or day early. We don't know for sure. So this one is kind of on that vein, is kind of leaning or leveraging that. That known fact of inconsistency. So, so I'm just. Let me pull it up here real quick. I want to read it because I thought it was. I thought it was pretty darn good.

Let's see, it says.

My example says, if I were a landscape, local landscaper, my irresistible offer could be we're on time or it's free. If we say we will be there at a certain time and we're late, your cost for that week's service is free. Stop rewarding mediocrity called AAA Landscaping today. Well, that could be a, an irresistible offer because if someone is not happy with their landscape or because of that reason, they will find you. That's an irresistible offer. Now, instead of calling, you might say it could be calling because that's going to. People are going to call in and that could be a source of new people. It also could be, you know, Click here for more information. I wouldn't recommend that. Not in that particular irresistible offer. You're trying to get people to take action. So I would work on what is my irresistible offer. If you're a local service business, you could spin what I just shared with you in many, many different ways to help you create an irresistible offer. I mean, I've seen it for, you know, pool men, for people fixing, fixing roof, somebody painting, someone who's a handyman. All of those areas we have a problem with as far as being on time showing up. Maybe it's something as a matter like, you know, our bids don't change, guaranteed. If it changes more than 10%, the whole bill, the whole work is free. Right? So what that means is, hey, if I said it was $1,000 to do X, Y and Z, and I came back and it was $1,200 and I didn't tell you because I'm. I should have to eat that. Nope, the whole deal is free. Well, now who's taking the risk? The business owner? That's an irresistible offer. An irresistible offer is not 10% off. I'm sorry, it's just not. It's just not enough to get somebody to either pull out their credit card and go to their website, go to your website and buy your service, or certainly it's not enough for them to pick up their phone or drive across town to your. Your place of business. 10% is not enough. It has to be something that will, that will stop them in their tracks. And I want you to Think about what's an irresistible offer. You've seen lately that, you know what, you pulled out your credit card and you took action on it. It was like, I'm stupid not to do this. You know, having something with a money back guarantee. Like when I was in a golf business, I had a situation where I knew people had been taking lessons forever and they were tired of like taking lessons, not getting better, taking lessons, not getting better. So I said, well, I'm going to make an offer of this. I'm going to guarantee you will reach your goals and you will improve. If not in the time we decided, then I will work with you for free until you do.

And I guaranteed that. Well, I wasn't, I was kind of semi shocked. But I had 100% closing ratio and in a very short period of time my lesson book was completely full. And over the course of years, I only had one client that actually didn't meet their goal. And we worked with them for a little longer until they did. And then once they did, guess what? They did. They re upped, we set higher goals and we did a new program for them. And I only had to fire, by the way, I did have a one clause and it said but you have to do X, Y and Z. So this is a two, a two person game. If I have to do something, you have to do something. So you know, if they didn't do what they're supposed to do each week as far as their drills to get better each time, they didn't do it as a strike, they got three strikes and then they're out and they don't get their money back. I only had to fire one person in several years of doing that. These are irresistible offers. So I want you to think about that. Start out with your emails, start out with known these people know like and trust you and then start building an irresistible offer that you can put out in the marketplace that, that sets you apart. That when somebody flies by you on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, they see your stuff, they say, whoa, I got to stop. Check this out, that's an irresistible offer. I've got to check that out.

I'm not going to say, hey, start working on your goals for 2024. I think you should be working on your goals all the time. I like 90 day sprints every 90 days.

And working on that. So I think if anything work on your 90 day sprint goals and set some that are maybe you feel like, hey, these are going to stretch me and in fact make them impossible because there's a book lately or a book that I've read. And I'm in a group called 10x. 10x is easier than 2x. The higher you set the goal. Now listen is the higher you set the goal, the fewer roads there are to get there, the fewer options you have to get there. In other words, if I said, hey, I'm gonna lose 10 pounds in the next 12 months, there are so many things I could do to lose those 10 pounds in the next 12 months, right? But if I said I'm gonna lose 10 pounds in seven days.

That'S a different goal. My options are now become more and more limited. And now it makes me more and more focused. And like a magnifying glass, when you focus that beam, you can start a fire. If you don't focus it, it's just blurry light. With that, I'll say Happy New Year, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Local Voice. My name is Jeff Harrison. We own a company here locally in the Palm Springs area. I like to say the Coachella Valley. Called Swing Point Media. We help local businesses market their businesses and attract their ideal customers using content marketing. Happy New Year, everyone. We'll see you in 2024.

There you have it, another episode of the Local Voice with Jeff Harrison sharing practical marketing advice that is working in today's busy climate. For more on Jeff, Visit him on LinkedIn or the website swingpoint media.com until next time, do the things that produce results and leave the rest for your competitor.